KIRKUS REVIEW

The fun-loving poet continues his
light romp through poetic forms in the third installment of the Poetry
Adventures series (Ode to a Commode: Concrete Poems, 2014, etc.), this
time focusing on a cornerstone of the nonsense verse world that seems made for him:
the limerick. First popularized by nonsense master Edward Lear in the mid-19th
century and traditionally illustrated with a silly picture, the limerick
irresistibly combines the predictability and momentum of consistent meter and
rhyme with the jarring surprise of an unexpected, usually humorous twist of
meaning. Case in point, a particularly hilarious example from Cleary: “I once
met an artist named Hank. / To put it quite bluntly, he stank. / Couldn’t
paint, couldn’t sketch, / and it wasn’t a stretch / to say he could not draw a
blank.” Rowland gleefully presents an artiste clad in polka-dot boxers intently
painting a stick figure while his pet dog, paw over one eye, hesitantly watches.
Other poems here rely more heavily on punning, as in the title piece or a ditty
involving a wonderfully rendered spider named Deb, “who’s become quite a
singing celeb. / When I asked how she’d grown / to be so well known, / she
replied, ‘I’m all over the web!’ ”

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